


Four Gifts

by sanguinity



Category: Strange Empire (TV)
Genre: F/F, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Minor Character Death, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: Kat Loving gave Rebecca four gifts. They are the most precious things in Rebecca's life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



> Warning for minor character death and non-graphic surgical procedures.
> 
> Huge thanks to my betas, grrlpup and amindamazed, who came through with almost no time left on the clock. Any remaining errors are, of course, entirely my own.

The first gift Mrs. Loving gave Rebecca was silence.

Rebecca often struggled with conversation, struggled to take the great, arching span of her thoughts and collapse them into a single tenuous line of words. It was difficult enough when given ample time, but she must also always do it _quickly,_ before the person she was speaking to lost patience and attempted to hurry her along by finishing her thought for her. Or worse, turned away, refusing to hear what Rebecca had to say.

And so, that first afternoon by the creek—that last day before the men died, before a new world began its excruciatingly painful rebirth from the ashes of the night’s fire—when Mrs. Loving asked if Rebecca had _really_ cut into a living body, Rebecca hurried to collapse her thoughts into words. Mrs. Loving was interested—even _fascinated_ —and the opportunity was too rare to lose. Rebecca battled through her ideas, attempting to convey the nearly unutterable glory of a living body, the true _sense_ of it, in that all-too-short window before Mrs. Loving lost patience. Triumphantly, she fought to the end of her idea—

—and was greeted by silence.

Confused, Rebecca looked up to see what she had missed.

Mrs. Loving watched her attentively, her eyes warm and dark. There was no hurry in them. She tilted her head inquisitively, as if interested to hear if Rebecca had anything more to say.

Rebecca re-considered.

She had not yet conveyed the _center_ of it, not quite.

She tried again, and Mrs. Loving listened.

 

The next spring, bundled against the cold and dark on the bank of that same thawing creek, Rebecca spoke over the icy rush of water to tell Mrs. Loving about Emily’s death. She had spoken of her mother before, but never for so long, or in so much detail. She told Mrs. Loving her memories of Bedlam, her mother’s loving shelter from it, and the threat after her mother's death of Rebecca being returned there. She and Thomas had both worn mourning during their quiet wedding service, and she had craved daily her mother’s instruction during that short and difficult marriage. Sometimes Rebecca's words tumbled freely, sometimes they snagged and halted, but throughout Mrs. Loving listened quietly.

Then Rebecca finally ran out of words, and had nothing left but the drying tears on her cheeks.

“I miss my mother, too,” Mrs. Loving said. Her own loss, her own longing, was palpable.

Rebecca nodded frantically, her tears welling up again, because that had been the _center_ of it.

“Thank you,” she said, “for _listening.”_ It was a rare and wondrous thing, anyone listening the way Mrs. Loving did. Emily had loved Rebecca, but Emily had seldom stopped to _listen_ to her. Thomas never had.

Mrs. Loving nodded, but it was clear that she didn’t understand the importance of how she listened, the _uniqueness_ of it. Rebecca tried again to make her understand: the wide-open space of Mrs. Loving’s silences, the invitation to take her time, to try again, to discover how she wanted to best express an idea.

Mrs. Loving frowned at her, and shook her head. “It’s rude to talk before someone else has finished talking,” she said, as if that was an adequate explanation.

It was _not_ an adequate explanation. Emily had taught Rebecca the same rule—Emily had insisted quite strongly upon it—and yet Rebecca was quite certain Mrs. Loving meant something altogether different.

 

Only two days later, Rebecca was emptying a basin of bloody water into the new grass beside the cribs when Mrs. Loving, working on a saddle she had hung over her porch rail, called out to her son, “Neal, you let your sister finish talking before you talk.”

“I didn’t interrupt her, Ma,” Neal protested, looking up from where he and Robin were squabbling on the far side of the yard. Robin looked between them, as puzzled as her brother.

“You didn’t wait to hear if she was done talking, neither. You respect someone, you wait to hear if they have said all they have to say. And then you make sure you think on it a bit, before _you_ talk.”

And that was the difference between what Emily and Mrs. Loving had meant. In Emily’s rule, one could interject any time someone paused in their speaking—it was why Rebecca spoke in such a rush, so as not to leave those tempting pauses. But in Mrs. Loving’s version of the rule, one had to give the other person time for _them_ to decide they were done.

Rebecca preferred Mrs. Loving’s rule.

“How come you’re only telling me?” Neal complained, while Robin smirked.

Mrs. Loving rubbed hard at the leather, then rubbed at it again. “She’s got ears. She can hear me as good as you can.” She stood back and eyed her work. “‘Sides, her problem isn’t going to be not listening to people. Her problem is going to be finding people who respect her enough to listen.” She caught her daughter’s eye, and Robin, suddenly serious, nodded at her mother.

Then Mrs. Loving looked directly at Rebecca, heaved her saddle off the rail, and took it back inside the crib.

 

Rebecca paid attention after that, noticing who followed Mrs. Loving’s rule, who followed Emily’s, and who didn’t bother at all. Very few seemed to know Mrs. Loving’s version of the rule: only Marshall Mecredi. Rebecca learned to trust a little less those who seemed friendly enough, but who didn’t stop to _listen,_ who were only waiting for Rebecca to pause so they could speak.

It wasn’t until Kat took Rebecca to meet her own people—she was _Kat_ by then, she had long stopped being _Mrs. Loving_ —that Rebecca finally met a large number of people who seemed to know Kat’s version of the rule. There on the South Saskatchewan, among people who wore bright sashes and laughed frequently, was a whole world of people who gave Rebecca enough time to try again, to speak further, if she wanted it.

Rebecca did not enjoy conversation with Kat’s people, however. They allowed Rebecca to speak her full mind, but they not infrequently mocked her when she had finished. Rebecca did not mind their japery for herself: Rebecca knew by then who she was and what she could do, and the others would either learn that, too, or they would not. But Kat’s people mocked Kat far more frequently than they mocked Rebecca, and their mockery clearly upset Kat. And because it upset Kat, it upset Rebecca, too.

“It is rude here, to correct someone to their face,” Kat explained, when Rebecca complained of the unkindness of Kat’s people. “If they feel someone is in error, they tease them instead, to let them know they could do better.”

“They consider you in error very frequently, then.”

Kat grimaced. “I’ve been away a long time. Picked up a lot of bad habits.” She laughed, but it was unhappy laughter. “I tell people straight out to their face when I think they are doing wrong.”

Rebecca considered this, reviewing when Kat’s people had teased her, and what they might have intended to mean by it. She shook her head. “It is better to speak plainly,” she said firmly. “That way there is no miscommunication.”

“Perhaps. Although if you try it, I think you’ll find people here will misunderstand you. They don’t mean by plain-speaking what you do. What we do,” she amended.

Rebecca nodded; it seemed likely.

Kat smiled then, although she still seemed sad. “I like our way better.”

“It is very noisy here,” Rebecca observed. The carts in the road were poorly maintained, and Rebecca could hear each one scream and groan for miles before it arrived. There were many times during their short visit that she had found it difficult to bear.

Kat held out her arms to Rebecca and hugged her tightly, the way Rebecca liked best. “We can leave in the morning,” she said.

Rebecca tucked her face into the crook of Kat’s neck and shoulder, and touched Kat's hair where it hung loose down her back. The strands slid cool and smooth between Rebecca’s fingers. It felt almost like silence.

* * *

The second gift Mrs. Loving gave to Rebecca was harder to name, and at first, didn’t feel like a gift at all.

It felt like contempt, like frustration and disappointment, like being called _cattle_ for the second time in twenty-four hours. Mrs. Loving shot the hat off the traitorous waggoner’s head, and then remained exactly long enough to help wrestle Thomas back into the wagon—Rebecca would never have managed his weight on her own, not in the open blankness of that field—and then refused to stay longer, chastising Rebecca for having placed her trust in Thomas, in the waggoner, in Captain Slotter.

But before mounting her horse, Mrs. Loving paused and asked, “You able?”

Rebecca nodded: she knew nothing about horses nor wagons, but Mrs. Loving had two missing girls who needed looking after. Rebecca would manage, one way or another. Rebecca had once held a beating heart in her hands: she would _manage._

Mrs. Loving nodded once, then left and never looked back, never doubting Rebecca’s judgement of her own ability.

It was a difficult task, getting back to Janestown. The waggoner’s horse was confused and rebellious about Rebecca’s uncertain touch on the reins, but Rebecca _managed,_ successfully bringing Thomas, wagon, and Mrs. Brigg’s horse all safely back to the cribs.

Then, with her scalpel, she saved both a mother and child from certain death—and what matter, if the mother could never bear a second child? What did a womb have to do with being a mother? Rebecca had not been a child of Emily’s body, and yet Emily had cared and loved for Rebecca, as the woman who had borne Rebecca had not. And Mrs. Loving, too, fought fiercely for her children, and not a one of them was a child of Mrs. Loving’s body. Furthermore, it was not _Rebecca_ who had prevented the young mother from bearing children again; she would not have borne them if she had died, either. No, there were two people alive in the great house tonight, mother and child both, who would not be alive without Rebecca, and Rebecca had done that. _Rebecca had done that,_ when Thomas could not.

But in thanks, Thomas had only flung _you’re not capable_ in Rebecca’s face. Flung the words like weapons, each syllable weighted with his frustration and disappointment.

In that moment, Rebecca felt the difference between his disappointment and Mrs. Loving’s. To Thomas, she would never be more than the girl he and Emily had rescued from the asylum: a curiosity, a prodigy, gifted in many things, but fundamentally incapable.

Whereas Mrs. Loving believed that Rebecca could be more, and was only waiting for her to rise and become it.

Rebecca had not known that another person’s disappointment could feel so heady.

That night, with their fare back to Toronto gone—Toronto, where Rebecca’s life was cloistered, narrow, _incapable_ —with the fare to Toronto spent and gone and _good riddance_ to it all, good riddance _forever,_ Mrs. Loving stopped to thank Rebecca.

“That’s three times now, you saved us.”

Rebecca nodded, because it was true. Mrs. Loving understood what Rebecca had done. Mrs. Loving could see it, and thank her for it, because Mrs. Loving thought her _capable._

And Rebecca _was._

 

When Mrs. Loving first saw Rebecca’s notebooks, she paused to look. “You drew this?” she asked, despite the fact that Rebecca was clearly hatching in the direction of the heart’s muscle fibers. It was the preacher’s heart in particular, the one that had trembled and quivered under her fingertips, not yet dead, and yet also unable to beat. Rebecca had three hearts in her anatomy journals now, each slightly different from the last.

“It’s as clear as a photograph,” Mrs. Loving said in wonder. “Clearer even. No wonder you can do what you can do. Taking someone’s body and putting it down like that, that is good magic.”

Rebecca frowned at her. “It is medicine, Mrs. Loving. Not magic.”

Mrs. Loving shook her head. “Same thing. Medicine, magic, and holy things, there's no difference.”

“Thomas says it's playing God, the medicine I want to create. If I had saved this man’s life—” she touched her pencil to her illustration of the preacher’s heart, and could not find the rest of the words. 

Mrs. Loving watched her quietly. Then, after a moment had passed, “Using the skills God gave you, Mrs. Blithely, that’s not playing God. That’s doing His work.”

“You truly think that,” Rebecca said, for no one else ever had.

Mrs. Loving nodded. “I do.”

So Rebecca explained her theory of electrical impulses, of what she might have been able to do for the preacher, if only she’d had the right equipment. How his heart had quivered, trying to beat, perhaps only needing the proper jolt to overcome its paralysis.

Mrs. Loving listened. When Rebecca finally finished, she nodded soberly. “If you say it can be done, Mrs. Blithely, then I believe you.”

 

They worked together well, Rebecca and Mrs. Loving, both striving their best to keep Janestown running and at peace. But Rebecca’s work was appreciated by the townsfolk, as Mrs. Loving’s was not. Sometimes, late at night, Mrs. Loving stopped by Rebecca’s crib, weary and bruised and smelling of some miner’s vomit. “It’s good to have you at my back, Mrs. Blithely,” she said during one of those quiet evenings, warming her feet at Rebecca’s fire.

Rebecca nodded, because she, too, appreciated the trust between them: that Mrs. Loving could throw her a glance, or Rebecca the same with Mrs. Loving, and the other would nod and step forward in support. It was simply what they did, each one trusting in the capability of the other.

So when the bounty poster with Mrs. Loving’s picture on it came into Rebecca’s possession—it was a different name, but clearly Mrs. Loving’s picture—Rebecca did not feel the need to say a word about it, not until she understood what needed doing and how to do it.

“Who already knows and can be trusted?” Rebecca asked during one of those late-night conversations, once Rebecca had decided what needed doing.

But for once, Mrs. Loving was not listening properly. “Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice hoarse, taking the poster from Rebecca.

“It does not matter—” Rebecca began.

“It _does_ matter, Mrs. Blithely,” Mrs. Loving interrupted her.

“It does _not,”_ Rebecca insisted. “He is dead now, and cannot harm you, and I do not wish to speak of his death. The bounty. Who already knows of it? Who can be trusted?”

Mrs. Loving stared at Rebecca for a long, frustrating moment, then turned her eyes back to the poster. She took a deep breath. “Jeremiah knows.”

Rebecca shook her head impatiently. Mrs. Loving’s husband was still recovering from his captivity with the Blackfoot; he would not serve Rebecca’s purpose. “We need someone to collect the bounty,” she explained. “So that the government will stop publishing these notices. And then, eventually, the hunters will stop coming.”

“Collect—?” Mrs. Loving began to pull back, but Rebecca reached out, stopping just short of touching Mrs. Loving’s arm.

“‘Dead or Alive,’ it says. I will supply a dead body, and they will think it’s you. I am capable of making them believe it. I am _capable,_ Mrs. Loving!”

Mrs. Loving took a long, shuddering breath. “Marshall Mecredi,” she finally said. “The Marshall would do it.”

“He will not turn you in?” Rebecca asked, surprised, for the Marshall was sworn to uphold the law. She had seen bounty notices posted in his station-house, when she had first come there.

“He knows, and hasn’t yet,” Mrs. Loving answered, her mouth quirking.

“If you feel it is right, then I shall ask the Marshall,” Rebecca said. “You may rely on me, Mrs. Loving.”

“It is not right that you risk yourself,” Mrs. Loving protested. “It would be better if I went away.”

 _“No,”_ Rebecca protested, suddenly panicked. She caught Mrs. Loving’s wrist, as if Mrs. Loving meant to leave at that exact moment. Rebecca was unsure when it had become so important that Mrs. Loving be here, in Janestown and nowhere else, but it was. It was desperately, vitally important. “I can _fix_ this. And you must let me. I am capable of fixing it. I will not allow any harm come to you. No harm to you, or to your children. I will see to it.”

Mrs. Loving looked at her, and Rebecca waited, tense. Then she felt Mrs. Loving’s muscles soften under her fingertips. “I think if anyone could, Mrs. Blithely, it would be you.”

 

And yet two years later, when word was sent from the Loving ranch that Jeremiah had fallen and was in a bad way, there was very little Rebecca could do to protect Mrs. Loving or her children.

Rebecca rode as quickly as her mount would go, for the first and only time in her life outriding Kelly, whose own horse was already exhausted from the ride into town to fetch Rebecca. And yet when Rebecca arrived at the house, Neal stepping forward to take Rebecca’s tired horse from her, it was only the work of a few moments to know that this was unlikely to end well for the Lovings. Mr. Loving had been thrown from his horse and struck his head, acquiring a depressed skull fracture. He had then lain for hours before he had been found and brought to the house, with more time lost while Rebecca was sent for. Not even a craniectomy could do much but give his family a few hours longer with him before he passed.

Rebecca did what little she could: a few extra hours for his family, and the surety he would feel no pain.

When it was over, Rebecca went out into the dawn light in the yard and cried. Less for the man himself, whom she had barely known, but for his family. Mrs. Loving had loved her husband, and her grief had been terrible to watch. Rebecca would have done much to spare her this, but she had no tools, no theories, that would have saved Mr. Loving.

It was Robin who came and found Rebecca. The girl was grown as tall as Rebecca herself now, and still growing. “Pa’s all right,” she said, in that strange way she sometimes did when someone died. “He was sad to leave us, but he’s all right.”

“Your father is dead,” Rebecca corrected her, because it was important that the girl understood that. And then, as Emily had taught her, and as she had so much occasion to witness since coming to Janestown, she added, “I am very sorry for your loss.” It was the proper thing that should be said, but it was also, in this case, true: she was deeply, deeply sorry. She had become used to being able to save the Lovings, used to being that last, resourceful person who stood between them and harm. Even with every terrible thing she had seen in Janestown, she had allowed herself to believe she would always be able to keep Mrs. Loving and her children safe. To find herself incapable on this occasion was a terrible blow.

“I know, Doc,” Robin said quietly. “I saw him. I don’t ever see people, not unless they’re well and truly dead.”

Then her face crumpled. Rebecca reached for her, tucking Robin’s face into her shoulder as she had seen the girl's own mother do, and held her while she cried.

***

The third gift Mrs. Loving gave Rebecca was her children.

It was a gift Rebecca had not wanted at first. She had not wanted it at all, that terrible afternoon near the beginning, when Mrs. Loving first tried to abandon her children—incorrectly claiming they would be better off with Rebecca—and then promptly turned around and offered herself to be tortured on the gallows in exchange for the temporary safety of her daughter.

It was a bewildering, terrible day, and Rebecca had been helpless to do anything but frantically shout for the necessity of a longer drop, unable to think of anything but the protracted, agonizing, nightmarish death that the children were about to witness.

And then, as abruptly as if Rebecca had awakened, the nightmare was over, and Mrs. Loving was safe in her children’s arms again, with nothing to show for any of it but tears and gasping and Captain Slotter’s lieutenant dead on the ground.

When the Loving children had finally calmed enough to briefly surrender their mother to another, Rebecca tentatively approached Mrs. Loving.

“May I—? Your were hanging… Your neck—” she tried, having more difficulty with her words than usual. Rebecca’s fingers touched on her own neck the points of greatest concern: the larynx, the carotid sinuses. Mrs. Loving had survived the initial hanging, but the tender tissues in her throat might yet swell from the damage, constricting the artery, the vein, the nerve. Rebecca could not _say_ it, she could not make the words come, but the hazard was as clear in her mind as it was in any of her drawings. “The swelling—” Rebecca tried again.

But Mrs. Loving understood and nodded, resolutely turning to face Rebecca. The skin on her neck was red and abraded, already bruising. Mrs. Loving flinched slightly when Rebecca touched her neck, and Rebecca palpated the structures as delicately as she could, looking for signs of deeper swelling.

“I wish to thank you, Mrs. Blithely,” Mrs. Loving said, her voice harsh and croaking.

Rebecca shook her head, because she had done nothing, _nothing_ for Mrs. Loving. It was only due to the capriciousness of Captain Slotter that Mrs. Loving was standing before her at all.

But Mrs. Loving continued on. “I heard you calling for a longer drop, wanting to make it quick. Sometimes that’s the best you can hope for in this life, a quick death, and the knowledge that someone will look after your loved ones when you are gone.”

“You must not speak,” Rebecca said.

“It was a comfort to hear your voice,” Mrs. Loving continued, ignoring Rebecca’s instruction, her voice still strained and rasping. “To know that if I died, it wouldn’t be alone. To know you would be there for my children.”

 _“Mrs. Loving,”_ Rebecca protested, tears on her own cheeks. And then, because Mrs. Loving was wrong, very clearly _wrong,_ and Rebecca could not hold her tongue in the face of that, “There is more to hope for than a quick death.” Mrs. Loving was well-loved by her children, and she loved them well in return. “There is _love,_ there are your _children—”_

“Who you would look to for me,” Mrs. Loving insisted, still fixed on her near-miss with death.

“Yes,” Rebecca said, giving in, because this seemed to be the thing that Mrs. Loving most needed to hear. “Whom I would look to. For you.” Thankfully, she could find no grave damage in Mrs. Loving’s neck. “There is swelling, but it is only mild, and I do not think it threatens your artery or nerves. But you must tell me immediately, if you feel faint or it seems that there is anything wrong. _Immediately,_ Mrs. Loving.”

Mrs. Loving nodded, wincing, and then clasped Rebecca’s hands where they still touched her neck. Rebecca stilled under the touch. “Yes,” Mrs. Loving agreed, “I will tell you immediately.”

 

It was several months later that Mrs. Loving asked Rebecca to take her children again. “I mean to bring my husband back, and it is too dangerous to take the children with me. You must look after them.”

“Of course,” Rebecca said. “But you must also _come back.”_ Rebecca had seen too much of Mrs. Loving’s bravely impulsive ways by then, and she had become half-convinced that Mrs. Loving privately craved her own death, wanting only a proper reason for it. The Blackfoot might give her a proper reason. “You must _come back,_ because your children need you.”

“But you will see to them?” Mrs. Loving insisted, as if Rebecca had not spoken.

“Yes. Yes, I will see to them.” It would be all three children this time, Neal and both the girls, because the marshall was going with Mrs. Loving.

Rebecca sought out the marshall out before they left. “You will see that she _comes back,”_ Rebecca told him, still uncertain of Mrs. Loving’s commitment to her own life. “She is needed _here._ You will see to it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marshall Mecredi said, touching his hat. “You can be assured, I will do everything in my power to make sure Mrs. Loving comes back.”

Rebecca nodded, because in this one matter alone she trusted the Marshall more than she trusted Mrs. Loving.

And then they left, leaving Rebecca alone with three resentful and anxious children.

“Ma should have taken us with her,” Kelly said.

“We could have helped,” Neal added rebelliously.

“You are helping more by being here, where she knows you are safe. Now you must go and wash your hands,” Rebecca told them, because that was what Emily had always said to Rebecca, “and then there are chores to be done.”

Robin stole a glance at her sister. “And wash behind our ears, too?”

“Yes,” Rebecca affirmed, although she was less certain of the necessity of that. Kelly smirked and rolled her eyes, and Robin giggled outright, but they turned and came inside.

“Come on, Neal,” Kelly chided her brother, “You have to come and wash behind your ears!”

“I’m not a _child,”_ Neal muttered sullenly, but at Kelly’s chivvying, he went.

 

Their mother had been gone for a week, and Rebecca was still learning how to manage the children. Robin was an easy child, doing as she was bid and taking to Rebecca’s small library with avid interest. She, like her mother, was fascinated with Rebecca’s anatomy journals, and she had a way with Rebecca’s patients, especially those who were dying. They were comforted by Robin’s presence, often laying easier and quieter, and thus sometimes living when Rebecca had not expected it. Keeping Robin constructively occupied, her mind off her parents and the hazards they were undergoing, was straightforward.

Rebecca had far more difficulty with Neal. Then Mrs. Briggs overheard Rebecca pleading with the boy on the crib porch, and Mrs. Briggs suddenly became a tower of thunder. “Your mother would be _ashamed_ of you, Neal, the way you’re acting. You have _responsibilities,_ young man, responsibilities to your sisters—” Kelly squawked a protest, but Mrs. Briggs ignored her and continued on, “and you need to grow into your britches and act like it. If you’ve got so little to do here—” And now it was Rebecca’s turn to protest, because there was plenty to do, if only the boy would do it— “Then there is plenty that needs doing at the saloon.” Before Rebecca was quite sure what had happened, Neal had been conscripted to roll barrels, clean tables, mop floors, repair furniture, and any other odd job Mrs. Briggs could find for him. But Neal did as Mrs. Briggs told him, no longer threatening to run off after his mother, and so Rebecca left Mrs. Briggs to it.

But where Neal had been simply mulish and rebellious, Kelly was outright puzzling, by turns angry and compliant. She scorned Robin’s studies, openly mocking Robin’s interest in Rebecca’s books, but one day Rebecca came into what she thought was an empty room to find Kelly attempting to puzzle through the words on the page on her own. Kelly started up at Rebecca’s entrance, then pretended she had been doing something else.

“So you can read, then,” Rebecca said, because until then, she had not been sure.

“Of course I can read,” Kelly said, proud. But when she tried to demonstrate reading for Rebecca, the words came out strange and twisted, the sounds in the wrong order.

Rebecca considered the nature of the errors Kelly was making. “I wish to try an experiment,” Rebecca proposed, but Kelly twisted away, angry.

“Doesn’t matter if I can read. Reading’s not good for anything, anyway.”

“The ranch your mother wants,” Rebecca suggested, “you want that, too? Someday you wish to take it over from her, yes? Then you will need to read, at least a little. Ledgers and deeds and promissory notes. Otherwise you must trust someone else to do it for you—”

“I trust Robin,” Kelly said defiantly, and Rebecca nodded, because the sisters were very close, and Robin could be trusted. “And I trust you,” Kelly added, and Rebecca blinked, surprised at her sudden uprising of emotion that went with that declaration.

Then she pushed it back, because there was a much simpler, more straightforward problem to deal with. “There may be a day when Robin is not there. When I may not be there, either. And then, if you cannot read, you might find that you must trust people like Mrs. Slotter.”

Kelly made a face. She had been a pawn in Isabelle Slotter’s plans more than once, and had little love for the mineowner.

“The words,” Rebecca continued, “I do not think you see them correctly.”

“I see fine,” Kelly protested. “I’m as good a shot as Ma. Nearly.”

“Yes, you _see_ correctly, but…” Rebecca paused, because she had no words for this. “My brain, it is not like yours or your sister’s. It presses on my skull, and thus I understand things differently. I _think_ differently than you do.”

“Your brain ain’t wrong, Doc. It’s just fine,” the girl protested loyally.

“But it is _different,”_ Rebecca soldiered on. “And so is yours. Not different in the same way that mine is different, but different again. When you see the words, your eyes see them correctly, but inside your brain, I think they change.”

“So I’ll never be able to read right,” Kelly said, and Rebecca could hear the girl’s disappointment.

“That is why I wish to experiment. I wish to see if we can change the way the letters go into your brain, so that they do not become twisted.”

“You’re going to cut my brain?” the girl asked, faintly alarmed.

“No,” Rebecca smiled. “I am going to cut paper, so you can only see a little bit of the words at a time. And we shall see if that will help.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Kelly asked.

Rebecca had only barely begun to understand the problem herself, and more ideas might come as she understood the problem better. “Then we shall try something else.”

By the time Mrs. Loving returned with Mr. Loving and the Marshall, Rebecca and Kelly had worked out a system by which Kelly could read a little. It was still not easy for the girl—unlike her sister, Kelly would never read for interest or pleasure—but Rebecca was confident that if Mrs. Slotter someday put a legal document in front of Kelly, Kelly would be able to read for herself what it said.

And when, the next year, Marshall Mecredi returned from collecting Mrs. Loving’s bounty and pressed five hundred dollars cash into Rebecca’s hands—“Mrs. Loving refuses to take it, and I’m certainly not about to”—Rebecca used it to buy shares in Mrs. Slotter’s mine. Mrs. Slotter might scheme and plan, but she was not dishonest, and the mine had prospered by means of Mrs. Slotter’s plans.

“In three parts, in trust for Neal Loving, Kelly Loving, and Robin Loving,” Rebecca told Mrs. Slotter’s man of business as he filled out the paperwork. Rebecca had only vague ideas of what Neal or Kelly might use the money for—expanding the ranch, perhaps, or riding out a bad year. But Robin, Rebecca thought, might wish to go to away for a proper education someday. Robin spent nearly as much time with Rebecca as she did at the ranch. Rebecca did not think that Robin wished to be a doctor, but Rebecca was willing to train her, if that’s what the girl wanted. In the meanwhile, however, Robin was still reading every book Rebecca could lay hands on: if Robin wished to go to school someday, then Rebecca would see to it that her mother’s bounty money would make it so she could.

 

Two weeks after Mr. Loving’s funeral, Kelly came to Rebecca. The girl looked exhausted and drawn, and kneaded her hat in her hand. “You have to come,” she told Rebecca.

“Is someone ill?” Rebecca asked, already gathering her things.

“Not by rights, no,” Kelly answered, and Rebecca frowned at her, not understanding. “Ma’s not sick, but she won’t _do_ nothing, neither. Sick at heart, maybe. Robin and I don’t know what to do.”

And Neal, of course, had barely left Mrs. Briggs' saloon since his father’s death. Rebecca had tried to reason with him, for his mother’s sake—Rebecca knew well how Mrs. Loving felt about alcohol—and Mrs. Briggs had flatly cut Neal off, but it had done little good. Whatever was happening at the ranch, Neal would not be of help.

“I shall tell Mrs. Briggs where I am to be found, and then I will come. If people here need a doctor in the meanwhile, they can come and find me there.”

Mrs. Loving looked far worse in her grief than Kelly. She sat listless and pale, staring into the distance, her freckles standing stark against her cheeks. Her hands were cold, cold even to Rebecca’s touch, whose own hands were chilled from riding. “Come, you must not do this,” Rebecca said, rubbing Mrs. Loving’s hands. And then, because she _knew_ Mrs. Loving, “Your children need you.”

Mrs. Loving looked at her, looked at her _properly,_ then shook her head. “They’re grown now.”

“And they still need you,” Rebecca answered, the words coming easily, because this had been a truth since she had first known Mrs. Loving. “You have never stopped missing your own mother,” Rebecca reminded her, knowing it to be true, “and I have never stopped missing mine.”

Mrs. Loving’s face crumpled, and she began to cry.

“Yes, good,” Rebecca said, because she could _see_ Mrs. Loving there now, present in her body, could see the _sense_ of her. She pulled Mrs. Loving to her feet. “You must wash, you must eat, and you must sleep, and in the morning there are chores to be done. I shall help.”

And she did help, chivvying Mrs. Loving through a hot meal and a bath, talking to her all the while—talking at first of Mrs. Loving’s children, and then of Rebecca’s latest ideas for new surgical procedures—and when she put Mrs. Loving to bed, Rebecca crawled in beside her, the better to keep her warm.

The third evening, Mrs. Loving looked at Rebecca’s hands, looked at them _properly,_ and saw that they were chafed and blistered.

“This is not the kind of work you usually do,” Mrs. Loving said.

“It is,” Rebecca insisted. “Tending to people who are not well. It is precisely the work I do.”

But Mrs. Loving turned away. “I’ll get some salve for that,” she said, and when she came back, she took Rebecca’s hands into her own hard and callused ones, and worked the salve into Rebecca’s injured skin. “You need proper work gloves, if you’re going to do this, ones that fit.”

“I have an extra pair,” Kelly volunteered from the near the fire.

“Then I shall wear Kelly’s,” Rebecca said, and Mrs. Loving nodded her agreement.

***

The fourth gift was entirely unlooked for.

Kelly had grown up something like Morgan, with a keener eye for women than men, although unlike Morgan, Kelly did not choose to live her life as a man. When Kelly began keeping company with a young woman from the cribs, Rebecca went to Mrs. Loving, hoping to intercede on Kelly’s behalf if it was needful.

But Mrs. Loving only laughed. “Kelly takes after her mother in that.” Two years had passed since Mr. Loving’s death, and Mrs. Loving had gradually grown back into herself again, changed by her husband’s death, true, but also still herself. “Do I surprise you?” she asked.

“You do not, Mrs. Loving,” Rebecca said, and it was only partially a lie.

“Oh, I think I do,” Mrs. Loving answered, still smiling.

“I had thought… You and the Marshall…had an understanding?” Rebecca paused, uncertain how to proceed.

Mrs. Loving let the question rest for a moment, then shook her head. “My husband came back from the dead. And in any case, the good Marshall never looked at me the same after he collected that bounty. The deceit compromised his principles, I think.” She snorted. “How his principles will survive becoming a politician, I can’t imagine.”

Rebecca tried to imagine Mrs. Loving wearing silk dresses among the marble columns of Washington. “You are not suited to being a politician’s wife,” Rebecca decided. “You speak directly, Mrs. Loving, and they do not value that.”

“Kick over a hornet’s nest every time I open my mouth,” Mrs. Loving agreed, and Rebecca laughed at the image of a Senator Mecredi in Washington, attempting to be dignified, but much bedeviled by hornets.

“I think,” Mrs. Loving continued, with a speculative glance at Rebecca, “that I would prefer that you call me Kat. We have been friends long enough, have we not?”

“Kat,” Rebecca said experimentally, and something in Kat’s answering smile made Rebecca’s skin glow with warmth. “I can call you Kat,” she allowed. “I would _like_ to call you Kat,” she corrected herself, because that was closer to the sense of what she wished to say.

“And I will call you Rebecca. Come, I want to you show you something,” she said, and going to the kitchen, pulled out Montgomery Ward’s wish-book. “This here,” she said, turning to a page she had folded down, “not the motor, but the generator and batteries. It made me think of your theories—”

“—of stimulating a heart, _yes,”_ Rebecca interrupted, taking the catalog from her. “Yes, this might do very well,” she said, reading the fine print under the illustration for the device’s specifications.

“I thought it might,” Kat said, the mischievous smile back again. “That’s why I ordered one for you.”

Rebecca looked up in shock.

“Would you not have use for one?” Kat asked, when Rebecca said nothing.

“I have use for it, yes. I will _use_ it. I will need a body to test it on, first, before I can use it, but it cannot be an old body, it will need to be a _fresh_ body. Perhaps I could—” And then her words died, because her brain was spinning too quickly with plans for the words to keep up.

Kat laughed. “Then when it arrives, it is yours.”

 

The batteries and generator arrived, and Rebecca became consumed with her trials with it. When she looked up again, ready to tell Kat of everything she had learned, it was springtime, which meant Kat was busy with the ranch.

Or it _ought_ to have meant that, Rebecca realized, but it seemed that Kat had been in town these past weeks far more often than Rebecca would have expected.

“Neal’s back,” Kat said when Rebecca asked, and Rebecca nodded, because she had noticed that much, despite her focus on the new device. Neal was back, and keeping himself to the ranch, well away from Mrs. Briggs’ saloon. “And Kelly’s girl has moved out to the ranch now, too,” Kat added, “which helps make up for Robin being away. Celia’s not as experienced as Robin, of course, but she puts in a hard day’s work. She’ll learn. But it seems I make her nervous. She learns better when I’m not there.”

Kat Loving could be intimidating when she wanted, but Rebecca did not find her so. But perhaps if Rebecca was much younger, unsure of what she was doing, and hoping to impress Kat—

“And besides,” Kat said, “I have had business in Janestown, of late.”

There was something odd about Kat’s manner in that last, and Rebecca could not place it. “What business?” Rebecca asked, because Kat would not have mentioned it if she minded Rebecca asking.

Kat gave Rebecca a half-smile, turned to her bag, and pulled out a paper-wrapped package, tied in string. “For you,” she said, with a strange tension. “If you would like it, that is. You don’t have to take it.”

Rebecca took the package and opened it—the quicker it was open, the quicker she could dispose with whatever was making Kat so uncomfortable. But she did not initially see the cause of Kat’s upset: it was only a pair of handsome riding gauntlets, the leather buttery soft, and the cuffs decorated with— She held the gloves to the light to see better.

“Cree quillwork,” Kat supplied. “Porcupine quills, dyed and flattened. My aunties taught me.”

“It is beautiful,” Rebecca said, because it was. Emily had taught her needlework when she was young, but Rebecca had not taken to it. She had finished her first sampler only when Thomas had promised to let her graduate to sewing people, if she first demonstrated skill in sewing Proverbs.

“It’s a courting present, if you’ll have me,” Kat said stiffly, and Rebecca looked up, because it was imperative that she see Kat’s expression. Kat seemed intent, resolved, and more than a little nervous. “If you don’t wish it—”

“I wish it,” Rebecca said quickly. This one time, perhaps, it was _not_ better to leave that extra bit of silence.

Kat relaxed, her breath releasing. “Well. That’s fine, then.”

They stood there for a moment, smiling at each other, and then Kat sheepishly glanced away. “I did not consider what to say next.”

“What is next is simple,” Rebecca said, laying the gloves aside. “What is next, is that you kiss me. Or I kiss you, it does not matter which. And then we will speak plainly, and decide together what we shall do after that.”

Kat grinned at her, waiting out her customary pause to see if Rebecca had finished what she wished to say. “That sounds like a fine plan,” she said.

“It is an excellent plan,” Rebecca agreed.

And it was.


End file.
